Sunday’s target practice went well. We took our 9mm pistols (my Glock 26 and Damsel’s S&W 908s) and Damsel’s S&W 686 .357 magnum revolver. We also took a couple of our shotguns, the 12 and 20 gauge Remington 870s.

We have been having warm weather this week and Sunday was no exception. The target shooting was fun and all, but the indoor range was a bit too warm. We toughed it out, though, and shot 50 rounds of .38 special, 100 rounds of 9mm and 50 rounds of shot shells.

In the video here, I’m following up on Damsel’s handy work by finishing shooting the target in half and then shooting off the left side (stage right) of the dangling silhouette target. After that series of shots, we exited the range to enjoy the cooler temperatures in the gun shop.

The STEREO project, a constellation of two identical solar probes, one ahead of the Earth (STEREO A) and one behind the Earth (STEREO B), simultaneously imaged a solar prominence from their divergent perspectives. This video was featured on NASA’s SOHO Pick of the Week.

The video below shows the mass ejection in synchronized timing from ahead and behind the Earth.

In the left panel (behind), you can see the event emerging from near the top of the solar disk, while on the right panel (ahead) it is occurring above the solar horizon. In these times when there are few sunspots, the old solar machine is still cranking out the good old nuclear fusion.

Last evening, we paused the DVD player to watch the liftoff of Space Shuttle Discovery. After a couple of aborted countdowns earlier in the week, Discovery, once again, roared into space from the Florida Coast.

Damsel snapped this image with her camera just at the moment of liftoff. Click to enlarge.

From NASA:

With seven astronauts and a host of experiments and equipment on board, space shuttle Discovery completed a flawless ascent into orbit Friday night to begin a two-day chase of the International Space Station. With Commander Rick “C.J. ” Sturckow at the controls, the shuttle lifted off on-time at 11:59 p.m. EDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will rendezvous and dock with the station Sunday and the crew will begin transferring equipment to the outpost during the 13-day mission.

These came home with us from the supermarket today. They are sunflowers but with very fluffy petals. Quite pretty. Click image to see the big picture.

Except for the radicals and hard-left voters, people who supported Obama in 2008 are slowly becoming disillusioned with the rookie president’s ineptness and inability to tell the truth, not to mention his attempts to move the nation rapidly toward the left.

From Karl Rove:

Obama Losing Support with Hispanics, Young Voters, But Steady with Liberals: President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 52% in the most recent weekly Gallup poll (8/17-8/23), down 15 points from its high in January. Obama’s popularity was still as high as 60% at the end of the first week of July. Since then, his approval rating has dropped sharply with key swing demographic groups, falling 15 points with liberal and moderate Republicans, 14 points with Hispanics, 13 points with voters aged 18-29, 13 points with voters who attend church nearly every week or monthly, and 12 points with voters earning between $60,000 and $90,000 per year (-12).

By comparison, his approval rating has remained fairly steady with liberal Democrats (-1), voters in the west (-1), those with post-graduate educations (-2), self-identified liberals (-3), and those earning between $36,000 and $60,000 per year (-4).

Obama’s victory last fall was largely built upon swing voters, not the Democratic base, so the last two months’ trend should be very troubling for the White House.

It should also be very troubling for the DNCC as they look toward 2010. It was mainly Obama’s popularity in 2008 that helped to sweep so many incumbent Republicans overboard.

In just a few more days, we will be taking off for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno. On the way, we’re planning to stop and take in some of the scenery. Our first stop is going to be Yosemite National Park.

It has been many years since either of us has visited Yosemite. We’re going to stay the night before near the park and will take the scenic drive to some of the highlights before heading to our next destination, probably near Lake Tahoe. Reno will be the next stop after we see some of the Tahoe area attractions. We’re still working out the details.

I captured the picture above just a few minutes ago from the Turtleback Webcam featured on the Yosemite National Park multimedia page. You can click the image to enlarge.

I hope we get lots of these beautiful flowers this year. Last year, we were got the Last Plumeria as late as November.

These were seen on the patio this morning. Click image to enlarge.

There comes a time in our lives when (if we’re lucky) we can hang up our toolbag and start to live the life of leisure. This is my year to put everything in motion to allow me to begin my retirement in just a few weeks. I have pulled all the handles to make things happen - it’s too late for me to stop the train from leaving the station now.

My first Social Security check will be deposited this Thursday.

Now, comes word that the Social Security Administration has suspended Cost Of Living Adjustments (COLA) for the next two years. Oh, by the way, they aren’t going to suspend premium increases for Medicare Part B.

From Yahoo:

Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise. The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly. …

Advocates say older people still face higher prices because they spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care, where costs rise faster than inflation. Many also have suffered from declining home values and shrinking stock portfolios just as they are relying on those assets for income.

“For many elderly, they don’t feel that inflation is low because their expenses are still going up,” said David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP. “Anyone who has savings and investments has seen some serious losses.”

Hat Tip - Captain Ed Morrissey.

We went to the range today for some overdue target practice. Afterward, we had our usual cleaning session. I cleaned up my little Para Warthog .45 ACP compact pistol and took this photo of her sparkling in the sunlight.

She cleans up pretty good, I’d say.

I took a lot of pictures last month when we were traveling up California State Route 1. This one, I believe, was taken just south of Big Sur. The scenery along this road is quite spectacular.

It’s not only seniors who should be wary of the healthcare games the administration and congress are now playing. Everyone stands to lose from the government’s grab, including the younger demographic who will be forced to buy insurance whether they want it or not.

As we used to say when I was a kid, “there’s a rat in the woodpile.” Or maybe more appropriately, “there’s a hidden virus inside the Trojan Horse.”

From the Patriot Post:

Something Smells Fishy About This Kool-Aid

President Barack Obama appeared to backtrack on a key provision of his attempted health care coup, telling a Colorado town hall audience that “the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.” So the president is giving in on the government-run option, right? Wrong.

While it’s a given that some on the Left are going bananas over the announcement, none other than former DNC Chief Howard “The Scream” Dean let the cat out of the bag on the strategy. “[T]he president knows very well that you aren’t really going to have health care reform without a public option,” Dean told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. “But he also knows he has to get this out of the Senate.” So the president is playing a cynical game of politics with health care? Say it ain’t so!

For now, 60 votes in the Senate are necessary to avoid a filibuster, and the public option is making that threshold harder to reach. If the bill were passed without the public option, it could be added back during reconciliation, at which point only 50 votes would be necessary for passage.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs spun the strategy shift by calling it a “boring consistency to our rhetoric.” Nothing’s changed, according to Gibbs. The facts, as usual, contradict the Democrats. On July 18, Obama said, “[A]ny plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans — including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest — and choose what’s best for your family.” But according to Gibbs, changing “must include” to “whether we have it or we don’t have it” is just “boring consistency.”

The proposed alternative to the public option is nonprofit health insurance cooperatives. However, as the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner explains, “Government-run health care is government-run health care no matter what you call it. The health care ‘co-op’ approach now embraced by the Obama administration will still give the federal government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, with a government-appointed board, taxpayer funding, and with bureaucrats setting premiums, benefits and operating rules. Plus,” Tanner adds, “it won’t be a true co-op, like rural electrical co-ops or your local health-food store — owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services. Under the government plan, the members wouldn’t choose its officers — the president would.”

As for the public option, Jacob S. Hacker, the liberal Yale scholar widely attributed with originating the idea, denies that it is a “Trojan Horse” to sneak in single-payer, government-run health insurance behind citizens’ backs. It seems, however, that Hacker also suffers from an acute case of “boring consistency.” In 2008, Hacker sounded a different note: “Someone once said to me, ‘Well, this is a Trojan horse for single payer.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan horse, right? It’s just right there! I’m telling you!’ We’re going to get there [to a government-run system] — over time, slowly.” He continued, “But we’ll do it in a way that we’re not going to frighten people into thinking they’re going to lose their private insurance.”

Sounds like the frog in the boiling water to us.

Tesla Motors is a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of Electric Vehicles (EV). They are the only company to offer EVs for sale to the general public in North America or Europe.

Tesla EVs use the lithium-ion battery technology and have a range of over 200 miles on a full charge. The standard EV roadster is capable of 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.

While all that sounds wonderful, the Tesla Electric Car just might have a few drawbacks . . .

Right: The Tesla Standard EV

From Planet Gore:

More on Tesla [Henry Payne]

President Obama, Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, and an army of Washington politicians with no experience in the auto industry say that electric vehicles are the future. They’re so sure of it, they’ve invested $489 million of your taxpayer doctors [sic] in the EV tech leader, Tesla. But as Tad Friend’s in-depth look at Tesla for The New Yorker shows, the future is not quite ready for primetime.

A few highlights:

• The price for the power train alone for battery-powered Tesla cars costs $15,000 — or about five times more than a standard gas-powered sedan. The average price paid for an entire new car in America today is $26,000.
• Tesla’s hard-driving founder, Elon Musk, says Tesla plans to populate American rest stops with QuickCharging stations, which will allow drivers to recharge their batteries in “just” 45 minutes. In the meantime, Americans have to plug it into 110-volt wall sockets. Friend tried that while test-driving the Tesla for his story. “Its battery gained only nine miles in two hours,” he writes.
• To charge the Tesla in the five minutes that American are used to spending at the gas pump (while on their way to work or taking the kids to soccer practice) it “would require an 840-kW connection, which would drain the grid as much as a 100-unit apartment building does in the course of a day.”
• And then there’s this from longtime Detroit product guru, Bob Lutz (now with GM), an admirer of Tesla — even as he points out the gulf between a boutique technology currently prized by Hollywood millionaires and a mass-produced technology: “Over thirty-five hundred parts sourced from around the world have to come together at the right place and the right time to produce sixty to seventy of these things an hour. And to make them, you need. . . an unbelievable amount of reliability testing that Tesla can’t afford to do right now — and we can’t afford not to.”

Emphasis mine. This is just another example of the non-achievable Utopian hope and change that all those uninformed voters (I have some less politically-correct descriptions of them, which I won’t present here) thought they were going to get.